1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus for performing printing by ejecting ink supplied from an ink tank and a method for controlling the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an ink jet printing apparatus forms an image by ejecting ink supplied from an ink tank onto a print medium from a plurality of ejection ports provided in a print head. If the ink tank becomes empty after ink is used up, the ink tank is replaced with a new one. In replacement, bubbles may enter an ink flow path that leads to the print head. The entry of the bubbles in the ink flow path may not allow the ink to be properly supplied to the print head, causing a malfunction in printing, such as non-ejection.
To avoid such a malfunction in printing, recovery processing is performed in which bubbles are sucked with ink in the ejection ports and removed for recovery of an ejection state. However, the recovery processing involves consumption of ink that does not contribute to printing, and therefore, ink may be wasted if the recovery processing is performed more than necessary.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-232815 discloses determining whether recovery processing is needed to perform recovery processing at an appropriate timing.
In the recovery processing, a sufficient number of times of suction is performed to totally discharge bubbles. If recovery processing is needed, however, performing printing processing after performing a sufficient number of times of the recovery processing requires a long time before the printing processing is started, whereby a user is forced to wait until printing is started. This gives poor usability to the user.